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Run for Your Lives! It's American's trying to Drive on the wrong side of the Street!
So today is Wednesday and we picked up the rental car today. They were supposed to have a car ready for us at 9 a.m. but there wasn't one available yet. So, we walked over to a cafe dreading more bland food. But we actually had pretty good stuff! Jude and I had a breakfast type meal (eggs, bacon) and Suzie chose a sandwich. All of us liked our food which is a miracle, because so far we haven't been impressed with any of the food here. The best place we've eaten is at Hard Rock Cafe's (we hit the ones in London, Edinburgh and Dublin!) and it's main meals are American! Go figure!
So, we finally get our car and I'm driving. Very strange. It was very tense and I had to really concentrate on driving on the left side of the road. I made it back to our hotel OK, which luckily was only about 3 blocks away. But when I pulled over in front of the hotel, Jude said - you almost hit those cars parked on the side of the road! Luckily I didn't hit them or scratch them! My only real scrape was when I was pulled off on the side of the road and there was a bicycle chained to a poll. When I pulled out onto the street, I knocked over the bike! It's a good thing no one was on the bike at the time! I can't tell you the strange sensation of driving on the wrong side of the road!
So, we head off on our driving adventure to Cork, Ireland where the Blarney Castle is and where you can kiss the Blarney Stone. The first challenge was how to get out of Dodge. I swear to God, there are NO street signs in Dublin (or England for that matter!). And the few times there are streets signs, they are posted about 15 feet high up on a building where you can't read them. Some of them are blue, some are white, some are yellow and all of them are so old that the writing on them is so worn down that you can't see them anyway! UGGGHHH Major frustration!
We got lost (of course) just trying to get out of town, but we backtracked our way back to where we started and finally got onto a motorway (same as our freeways). Going about 100 km per hour (my guess is that's about 60-65 miles per hour), driving on the motorway isn't much different than driving here; except that the left lane is the "slow lane." It took me a while to build up the courage to pass a car - but I finally did and it felt good! Now, I'm old pro! Except, when we reach town....
All these towns have many roundabouts and not all of them have good directions on where to go. We ended up asking some newspaper vendor that was standing in the middle of the street where "such-n-such" road is. He explained it to us, and then asked us for 1 euro for the paper! I guess they have to make their money some way or another!
We finally get to our hotel in Cork and it's almost 5 p.m. Not much time to drive another hour and half to the Cliffs and besides I just didn't want to drive anywere anymore because I needed to unclench!
We ended up just wandering around Cork for a while. Mostly it's a shopping area with a bunch of pubs thrown in. The people were nice enough, but I didn't find much in Cork to write home about.
The next morning, I drove to Blarney Castle. This is where the Blarney Stone is and if you kiss it, it will give you the gift of eloquence. Well, I was too stressed out from driving and walking up all the circular steps just to get to the top, that I didn't kiss the stone. Suzie and Jude did though and it wasn't a pretty site!
Getting down the castle steps was another adventure! I must be getting old because I went down those steps S L O W L Y!!! We walked around the castle grounds and it was absolutely beautiful! It was fun to go to the castle because of the Blarney Stone, but by now we are pretty "castled out" - Oh look, another random castle! Oh look, another random castle! They seem to be EVERYWHERE!
From Blarney Castle, we drive up to Limerick. Everything is going ok on the motorway. Then we hit town. And once again, there are no street signs to be had anywhere. We even had a computer mapping/directions program for Europe and it didn't help much because it always said "take a left a local road" - swell.
We finally had to stop at another hotel and ask where can we find your competor's hotel in town? They were actually super nice, but the directions people give is so confusing! Go to the next set of traffic lights and turn right, then you'll see a castle and turn left. YOU SEE CASTLES on EVERY BLOCK!!! Give us some street names please! We eventually had to ask 3 different people how to find our hotel. By this time, Suzie's totally stressed and I'm just like "it's part of the adventure!" which makes her even more stressed because that's not a fun adventure for her. Well, after stumbling our way through, we finally got to our hote in Limerick!
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